Seekers Bible Study 2008
SIN

Jeremiah 8:18-9:11
A lament on the fate of Judah (the southern kingdom).

The northern kingdom has already been scattered by the Assyrians and now the southern kingdom is threatened by Babylon. The lord, through Jeremiah, has already said that Judah will fall. The question in v19: "Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?" Is answered by God, "Why have they provoked me to anger with images, with their foreign idols?" The lament continues with "Is there no balm...?" and weeping for the people. Starting in 9:2 God responds that He wishes He could escape the people because they are so evil. In 9:4 "For all your kin are supplanters": Essentially you have supplanted or replaced the true people. The word used here for "supplant," is a play on the name Jacob, whose people have gone astray. Thus God "will now refine and test them." Judah will be laid waste. But note that the refining and testing, exile in Babylon, while not making them a perfect people, did strengthen the Hebrew people in their faith.

2 Samuel 11:1-12:7
David's sin with Bathsheba.

To understand this and much of the Bible, we need to digress and talk about countries and war at that time. Countries did not have fixed boundaries as they do today. Territory was measured city by city. David was king over a loose coalition of tribes representing control of a number of cities in the area. In David's time there were actually probably more cities controlled by other groups than by the Hebrews. Battles were frequent as they vied for survival in very difficult and arid terrain. Even in Jesus' time, there was probably little Roman presence in Nazareth, but just a stone's through from Nazareth was a busy Roman city which probably had little Jewish presence and is not mentioned in the Bible.

David had been leading his army (including earlier as a rebel group against Saul). But now he is sending the troops out and staying in his palace. (It says that he sends "all Israel," but he stays safe at home.) He sees Bathsheba and is unable to control his urges. In fact, there is not evidence that he tries. He is told that she is from a well-placed family and married to one of his best soldiers, Uriah. He takes her to his bed at her most fertile time. Lust is blind. Bathsheba is pregnant. David calls Uriah back from the field. If you wanted to know how the battle is going (at least at that time), you would send a messenger not one of your best men. Unlike David, Uriah is not going to live in luxury while his men are in the field and in danger. Having not succeeded in getting Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba so that Uriah might think that he is the father, he devises a plan to get Uriah killed so that no one will know about David's adultery.

Of course, God knows. And He sends Nathan to confront David with his sin.

If you were going to create a hero to symbolize your people, would you make him a murderer and adulterer? We often hear nothing but good about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Were they perfect people? The inclusion here shows that those compiling our Bible recognized that no one is perfect. Absolutely no one! Everyone fails. Everyone suffers the consequences of their actions. Everyone can be reconciled to God if they repent. The idea that Christ was human and yet was perfect is a major stumbling block to acceptance of Him by Jews.

Besides the fact that everyone sins, a point of the story is that no one is above being responsible for their actions. This is very different from many religions/governments where the king/caesar/tsar/emporer is omnipotent. What does this say about the idea that the Pope is infallible? If the Pope is the successor to Peter, was Peter perfect? The man who denied Christ three times. There have been a number of Popes that hardly seemed perfect.  Corruption of the papacy is one of the things that Luther protested. In more modern times, this idea was central to the Magna Charta and our constitution. This has not deterred leaders from trying to exert power. President Nixon once said, "If the president orders it, that makes it legal." That did not work for him.  Comparing sin, disobeying God's word, and illegal behavior, disobeying man's law, is a very complicated subject that has caused much trouble and could occupy us for weeks. But the idea that no one is too good to be a sinner and that no one is above the law are very similar concepts.

Psalm 51
This psalm is identified as David's penitent psalm on being confronted with his sin by Nathan. It notes an important idea of the position of sacrifice in the Hebrew religion. Sacrifice could not make up for intentional sin. Only if the sinner was willing to repent and not sin again was a sacrifice acceptable. It refers to rebuilding the temple which suggests that at least part of it must have been written during the Babylonian exile since it was Solomon, David's son who built the original temple.